Sir Ralph Norman Angell had all the answers. In 1909, he published “Europe’s Optical Illusion,” a pamphlet arguing that the global integration of economies through trade and industrialization had made total war obsolete. The outbreak of World War I dented the theory somewhat. But such was the power of Angell’s argument — and the insight of European elites — that he received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1933. World War II started six years later.

Angell and others had missed a key point. It’s not just the intensity of trade between nations that influences the tide of war and peace; the kind of nations engaged in trade matters as well.

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